This morning, I awoke to a naked pillow--a pillow that wore no case. Because my mind was in the receptive state that follows one’s awakening (as it also precedes one’s slumbering)--the best time, incidentally, for conceiving ideas for stories!--I saw something, a detail, which, more likely than not I wouldn’t have noticed at all had I not been in such a receptive frame of mind: a decorative feature. Spaced apart by three inches or so, a series of seven bands of stripes, each of which, starting with one, increased by an additional stripe, appeared upon the pillow’s surface, or skin: one, two, three, four, five, six, and seven. Someone had deliberately designed this feature, although chances are that few, if any, would ever notice it and that fewer still, perhaps, would care. It was enough that the designer him- or herself had cared to take the time and trouble to add this pattern to what would have been otherwise blank cloth. Seeing the time and trouble that an anonymous someone had taken to add this design to a fabric that few would ever even notice, much less appreciate, made me think about the significance of detail, especially as it relates to writing horror (or any other genre of) fiction. Not only does the inclusion of such details in one’s descriptions of settings (or the physical appearance of characters’--including the monsters among them) help to create verisimilitude, but detailed descriptions also create mood, tension, suspense, fear, and disgust--in a word, horror. Indeed, a judicious use of details can even produce a somewhat subliminal effect, affecting readers (or moviegoers) on an unconscious level. As they do in many other ways, ancient Greek (and other) myths offer writers, especially of horror, fantasy, and science fiction, a prototype of techniques for developing monstrous characters. Some mythical monsters are hybrids, which merge features from two or more actual animals (the centaur combines man and horse). Others are formed by removing a feature that an actual creature typically possesses (the Cyclops has only one eye). Still others are created by multiplying the attributes that a real animal or human has (the hydra has many heads). In many cases, two or more of these techniques are combined, so that, for example, a griffin combines aspects of the lion (body), the eagle (head), and the dragon (wings). Another trick is to replace one thing with another, as is seen in the Gorgon’s hair, in which serpents take the place of Medusa’s and her sister’s dreadlocks. Although a monster such as the griffin might appear more ludicrous than hideous to modern readers or moviegoers, the point is that a more judicious combination of anatomical parts, more appropriate to today’s sensibilities, could produce startling--and eerie or frightening--results. In the version of The Invasion of the Body Snatchers in which Donald Sutherland stars, an image appears that remains firmly embedded in my brain: a dog with a human, instead of a canine, head! The sight of this sight nearly floored me then, and it haunts me yet. And, who knows but that, soon, we might be confronted with just such a real-life monstrosity, for, with both cloning and genetic engineering present-day realities, anything seems possible. Of course, details apply beyond just the physical environment and the physiological appearances of monsters and other characters. Writers should be specific about the abilities of their characters--and their non-human or monstrous dramatic personae, in particular. Stephen King’s monster in It seems to derive from the shape-shifting Greek deity Proteus, whereas Tak, the demon who inhabits the pages of his Desperation, appears to be something right out of Ovid’s Metamorphoses. The It villain can take the form and appearance of anyone’s worst nightmare, whereas Tak can leap into and possess anyone’s (or anything’s) body, although, as a result, he causes a biochemical meltdown of his host in not-so-pretty short order. Horror writers, more than any other type of author, need to remember that the devil is in the details.
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